It is undisputed that government generates revenues from taxes, oil extraction and
exportation to finance public goods such as economic infrastructure, social services and for
the operation of government itself. For this reason lack of revenue will be a major obstacle
to economic growth. in Nigeria, it appears that a step increase in public revenue due to the
surge in natural resources wealth and the contribution of non oil revenue rarely improved
the much needed public goods and the general wellbeing of the citizen. Indeed, quite the
opposite happen. On the bases of this, the effects of pubic revenues on economic growth
were investigated in Nigeria from 1980 -2008. We employed two method of analysis. The
descriptive method and the econometric method. Finding from the descriptive analysis
shows that the growth rate of oil revenue is volatile as compared to the growth rate of both
non oil revenue and federal government revenue; however oil revenue still dominates public
revenue. While finding from the econometric model shows clearly that public revenue and
economic growth have a long run relationship which suggests that the model to use is the
vector error correction model which measures the speed of adjustment of the long run to
converge to their short run equilibrium. The result of the vector Error Correction model
shows that the RGDP parameter is correctly signed with a 42% speed of adjustment in the
short run to reach equilibrium level in the long run. The result of the Granger causality test
reveal that public revenues does not granger cause RGDP neither does Economic growth
Granger cause public revenues. Based on the finding we highlight some major issues that
policy makers should consider for effective usage of public revenues toward growth
enhancement.